Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Montreal is an old-school town. I love listening to the local news here. Guy grabbed in a barber shop in St. Leonard, bundled into a van and driven away. Another guy kidnapped and held in Île des Soeurs for a ransom. Good old school craziness. But today's news about the cols bleus was just the best.

The city employees who are responsible for snowplowing, repairing potholes, putting up street signs and all of those other municipal responsibiilites are known as the Cols Bleus. This literally means Blue Collars. They actually wear shirts with that name on it. They are part of a powerful union and, judging by the media, seem to be constantly at war with the mayor's office. Montreal is famous for its potholes and a lot of the anger about the bad streets is directed towards the cols bleus. Every winter, as well, there is always some section of town that isn't getting properly plowed. The mayor goes out to the city yards with a bunch of security guards and confronts the workers.

I sympathize with the working people whose physical labour allows the rest of us to live our lives in comfort. I think they should be paid well, at least as well as a mid-level executive who works in an office, and they should be treated with respect. I'm envious especially of the ones who drive the mini-plows that clear the sidewalk. I always give them the thumbs-up and would love to invite the plowers in for a beer after they've cleared my street.

I don't know any cols bleus personally, and I wish I did because I'd love to hear their position from one of them directly rather than from the union spokesperson. Because more and more, I am losing respect for them. It's always lame to watch government work in action, but it is ridiculous here. Whenever the Ville de Montréal trucks are parked around a job, there are almost always two or three guys just sitting there, smoking. And acting like they should be doing that. How did that culture develop? People work hard in Quebec and they always have. The original french settlers worked famously hard to build a nation. The waves of immigrants since then have all been hard-working. How do the cols bleus become so justified in doing a half-assed job? Especially one that directly benefits the city they live in.

Here is a specific example. The sidewalk at the base of the stairs outside our building was torn up at some point in the past. There is a two meter wide strip that is just gravel and dirt. Probably it's the result of a gas line being put to the building. One day, early last spring, I came out to see a bunch of orange lines spraypainted around the edges of the gap in the sidewalk. Cool, I thought to myself, they are going to repair this. It wasn't a big deal, but it did get muddy in the spring and icy in the winter. The spray paint marks stayed there through the spring and the summer. One day in early September, there was an incredible screeching and grinding noises. I came outside to see a guy with a concrete cutter, slicing into the sidewalk just outside the gap. It was 6 months later, but at least they were going to do the job. Wrong. They cut the concrete and that's it. I'm still waiting.

There is an episode of the Bougons where the uncle, who really does want to work, gets a job with the Cols Bleus. He's so psyched when he gets the job, and is disappointed when they spend the whole day driving around, going to strip clubs and taking naps in the city trucks.

The news that I was so psyched about today was that the city spied on a cols bleus pot-hole team. They punched in, got their trucks, drove directly to a coffee shop, had breakfast for an hour then drove around "aimlessly" for another hour. So good. So busted. How do they feel? Probably resentful and finding some defensive excuse for their behaviour. Already, the union is asking why was management spying on them instead of supervising them. Now that's spin.

Hopefully this will kick those goldbrickers among the cols bleus (because I'm sure there are many hardworking ones - I sure hope so) in the ass and start them doing their jobs. C'mon guys, you've got the greatest city in North America to keep in repair. Go out and do your job!

Why briques du neige?

When I first moved to Montréal, I was obsessed with the quantity of accumulated snow in the winter. I came up with a scheme to design a snow-brick making tool and hire out my services to people where I would turn all the snow in their yard to bricks and then stack it neatly. This enterprise, named briques du neige, would also be an excellent way to learn about and integrate myself into my new community. Unfortunately, before I was able to launch my plan, the Japanese invented Yuki-Taro and made me redundant. So my project morphed itself into this blog, kept the title (including the minor grammatical error which perfectly captures my functional but erroneous french) and the mission to better understand this crazy city and the Quebec culture that is such a crucial and complex part of the Canadian story.

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About Me

1/3 American, 1/3 Canadian, 1/3 Montrealer, when I'm not working for the planet and living my lucky life, I hang out on the internet and write about culture and language in Montreal, books and movies. I also rant on a wide range of subjects and try to do that here so my wife doesn't have to be the only one to suffer.